Noun

they laid before them how unbecoming it was the Dignity of such sublime Creatures to be sollicitous about gratifying those Appetites, which they had in common with Brutes , and at the same time unmindful of those higher qualities that gave them the preeminence over all visible Beings.

* 1946 , (Bertrand Russell), History of Western Philosophy , I.17:

But if he lives badly, he will, in the next life, be a woman; if he (or she) persists in evil-doing, he (or she) will become a brute , and go on through transmigrations until at last reason conquers.

A person with the characteristics of an unthinking animal; a coarse or brutal person.

One of them was a hulking brute of a man, heavily tattooed and with a hardened face that practically screamed "I just got out of jail."

*

She was frankly disappointed. For some reason she had thought to discover a burglar of one or another accepted type—either a dashing cracksman in full-blown evening dress, lithe, polished, pantherish, or a common yegg, a red-eyed, unshaven burly brute in the rags and tatters of a tramp.

(archaic, slang, UK, Cambridge University) One who has not yet matriculated.